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Billionaires (with cats) vs Psychedelic Freaks

Loved loved loved this quote from Holly Herndon in a print copy of Huck Magazine

Her latest promo (at time of writing) is here:

Boom Boom Boom

Sometimes, the Vengaboys played very loud on a car stereo in a town full of drunk blokes really hits the spot. It’s as simple as that.

Came across some lovely tracks on Piff Records out of Bristol. Ended up listening to this tasty mix. I’m not all the way through yet. But it’s tickled my fancy. Anything that kicks off with the Hell Interface remix of Midas Touch gets my vote, always. (Hell Interface is allegedly an alter ego of the Boards of Canada fellahs).

Found this random SWF on my HD. Made me all Poke / Orange / Balloons nostalgic.

Road

Brick Lane, London E1. Love the Birmingham phone number. No idea why.

Coldwar Steve at The Social

Totally by chance ended up at The Social on Little Portland Street last night. Sophie suggested it. I’ve not been there for more years than is decent.

Imagine my delight as I found that the @Coldwar_Steve exhibition was still in full swing – read all about it.

Suffice to say it’s amazing. A glimpse into a parallel reality where Danny Dyer and Kim Jong-un are deciding the fate of the universe over a budget kebab. Much more reassuring than what’s actually going on in the world.

And I highly recommend following @Coldwar_Steve on Twitter if you don’t already.

Coldwar Steve at The Social

Totally by chance ended up at The Social on Little Portland Street last night. Sophie suggested it. I’ve not been there for more years than is decent.

Imagine my delight as I found that the @Coldwar_Steve exhibition was still in full swing – read all about it.

And I highly recommend following @Coldwar_Steve on Twitter if you don’t already.

Breakfast Beer and Bingo

Mr Tait and Mr Bingo attempting an appropriate morning ‘good times’ face.

I’ve known the wonderful Mr Bingo for many many years. In fact, this morning, he announced that the freelancing he did for Poke was his first proper creative gig (after working at Size?).

Anyway, I bumped into him on Friday – he was hanging out in our window with the supremely talented Wilfrid Wood – and we got chatting. He asked me if I was still not drinking (last time we met I’d decided not to drink for a while). I admitted that I’d given up giving up. A nonsense conversation flowed and I mentioned to him that I’d just finished reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

In the book Mr Walker talks about how it’d be much better if students drank in the morning rather than the evening, from a sleep and memory retention point of view. We formed a pact to meet for a morning beer at the soonest opportunity. Mr Bingo, being a knowledgeable sort of chap suggested The Masque Haunt on Old Street (it opens at 8am for those who are interested in such things).

So this morning we met, we drank a single pint of beer, and we talked a very enjoyable hours worth of nonsense. We covered off a lot of things. From:

What kind of face is appropriate to make in a photograph whilst drinking a pint at 9am (our best attempt is above).
Who else frequents such a venue at such an hour? (Turns out all kinds of people. Most of them just having very reasonable breakfasts and coffee).
How do you start a naive and innocent movement when everything in culture is so pre-meditated?
Have you ever drunk a 9am beer when not at an airport?
Mr Bingo’s 2018 scratch-off-the-clothes advent calendar
Getting older, and the attractiveness of older men / women.
Whether we’d have a good time at Bangface?
About how those sober morning raves are the antithesis of what we were doing – not that either of us have anything against morning glory parties – I’m quite up for that too.
Happy Hardcore tape packs and the merits of DJ Sy, Slipmatt, Dougal, etc. I shared The Old School Rave Tape Archive on Mixcloud.
We also reminisced about how, after the first job he’d done for me I took him out and told him he wasn’t charging us enough money. Apparently I used to have scruples, who knew?

There’s something very free about a Weatherspoons at 9am, especially on a sunny day.

We agreed to do it again in a month. And to bring a guest each. And the next month that guest could then bring another guest. And pretty soon there’d be a Weatherspoons full of nonsense, and affordable breakfasts…

Fetishising Smaller Boxes of Life

Last night I found myself down a web-wormhole of high end paper-based-products. It’s a perversion of sorts. But better than some of the alternatives, right?

I ended up at Present & Correct, a purveyor of the loveliest of stationery. Look how beautiful these diaries are. So continental. So classy.

And the beauty is more than surface-deep.

Here’s another beautiful linen bound diary, equally European, equally nice.

Again, with nice pages inside.

And I really loved this, a beautiful stamp that lets you print an outline your week onto any available bit of paper you might have:

Then I had a revelation, what I was fetishising had nothing to do with paper products. And everything to do with how little the users of these products need to fit into their day. In this last example, it would force you to focus on one, or two things max, per day.

Imagine how nice that would be.

Even with the tiniest handwriting and the finest of fineliners you’d struggle to get one of my days into one of these products. Even the week-to-a-page view above.

This is what a typical busy day looks like in my Google Calendar (the meeting names have been redacted to protect the innocent).